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Champlain College Featured in The 2014 Princeton Review ‘The Best 378 Colleges'

August 06, 2013
| By Champlain College News

BURLINGTON, VT — Champlain College continues to be one of the country's best institutions for undergraduate education, according to The Princeton Review. The education services company features the school for the third year in the new 2014 edition of its annual college guide, "The Best 378 Colleges," (Random House / Princeton Review, $23.99.)

Champlain College President David F. Finney said, "This continuing recognition is a reflection of everyone at Champlain College for a commitment to providing the most student-centric, professionally-focused, education in the country."

Only about 15 percent of America's 2,500 four-year colleges and only four colleges outside the United States are profiled in the book which is The Princeton Review's flagship college guide. It includes detailed profiles of the colleges with rating scores for all schools in eight categories, plus ranking lists of top 20 schools in the book in 62 categories based on The Princeton Review's surveys of 126,000 students attending the colleges.

The schools in "The Best 378 Colleges" also have rating scores in eight categories that The Princeton Review tallies based on institutional data it collected during the 2012-13 academic year and/or its student survey for the book. The ratings are scores on a scale of 60 to 99 and they appear in each school profile. Rating categories include: Academics, Admissions Selectivity, Financial Aid, Fire Safety, and Green, a measure of school's commitment to the environment in its policies, practices and education programs. Among the ratings in the Champlain profile are scores of 96 for quality of life and 92 for Green rating and 84 for Academics. The Princeton Review explains the basis for each rating score in the book and online.

"Champlain College offers outstanding academics, which is the primary criteria for our choice of schools for the book," says Robert Franek, Princeton Review's senior VP / publisher and author of "The Best 378 Colleges. "We base our selections primarily on data we obtain in our annual institutional data surveys. We also take into account input we get from our staff, our 35-member National College Counselor Advisory Board, our personal visits to schools, and the wide range of feedback we get from our surveys of students attending these schools. It is their opinions that college applicants often value the most, particularly on (or in the absence of) campus visits. We also work to keep a wide representation of colleges in the book by region, size, selectivity and character."

"We are very pleased that The Princeton Review has included Champlain College to be a member of its prestigious Best 378 College list for 2014," noted Ian Mortimer, vice president of Enrollment Management at Champlain." Champlain is about helping students find their academic and career passions and developing them to their highest potential.

"Preparing students for the opportunities and challenges of an increasingly competitive world is not negotiable for us. When a student graduates from Champlain College, they can be confident that they are not only career-ready, but also life-ready," Mortimer said.

"Students at Champlain College are immediately immersed in their prospective major and real-life internships via the Upside-Down Curriculum; they are challenged to think critically and further develop communication and writing abilities from the nationally acclaimed liberal arts core; and they will gain important skills such as financial sophistication, career management, and other life-building knowledge. It is an academic experience that is unparalleled, and our graduates are experiencing the benefits the day after graduation," he added.

In its profile on Champlain, The Princeton Review praised the College it for its "Excellent professors, innovative classes and an inviting small-classroom environment," and quotes extensively from Champlain students surveyed for the book. Among the Princeton Review comments:

"...as a whole, students are noticeably goal oriented."

"...very interactive, conversational and friendly."

"...Serious about doing big things and going far in life"

"...Professors nurture an innovative and interactive classroom with hands-on experience and an integration of personalized education and real world problem solving."

"Champlain wants to make sure you're doing what you love and that you can continue doing what you love long after you graduate."

Student comments also focus on Burlington as an "amazing college town" ....packed with students from other universities and colleges and that "student activities are always available such as skiing or boarding, biking, hiking, movies, plays, clubs and bars." One student says that on the whole, while they enjoy the social opportunities afforded by Burlington and Champlain, they are also "serious about doing big things and going far in life.

The Princeton Review does not rank the colleges academically or from 1 to 378 in any category. Instead it reports in the book 62 ranking lists of top 20 colleges in various categories. The lists are entirely based on The Princeton Review's survey of 126,000 students (about 333 per campus on average) attending the colleges. The 80-question survey asks students to rate their schools on several topics and report on their campus experiences at them.

Topics range from assessments of their professors as teachers to opinions about their financial aid. A new ranking list in this year's edition of the book names the schools at which students gave their school's science/lab facilities the strongest ratings. The Princeton Review explains the basis for each ranking list here.

In a "Survey Says" sidebar in the book's profile on Champlain, The Princeton Review lists topics that Champlain students surveyed for the book were in most agreement about in their answers to survey questions. The list includes: "Students are happy," "Class discussions are encouraged," and "Students get along with the local community."

Champlain is also included in The Princeton Review's Guide to 322 Green Colleges, released in April 2013, which profiles 320 institutions of higher education in the United States and two in Canada that demonstrate a strong commitment to sustainability in their academic offerings, campus infrastructure, activities and career preparation. The guide is the only free comprehensive and annually updated guide to green colleges, and is available online.

The Princeton Review's school profiles and ranking lists in "The Best 378 Colleges" are posted at PrincetonReview.com.

About The Princeton Review

Founded in 1981, The Princeton Review is a privately held education services company headquartered in Framingham, MA. The company has long been a leader in helping students achieve their education and career goals through its test preparation services, tutoring and admissions resources, online courses, and more than 150 print and digital books published by Random House, Inc. The Princeton Review delivers its programs via a network of more than 5,000 teachers and tutors in the U.S.A., Canada, and international franchises. The Company also partners with schools and guidance counselors worldwide to provide students with college readiness, test preparation and career planning services.

Founded in 1878, Champlain College is a small, not-for-profit, private college in Burlington, Vermont, with additional campuses in Montreal, Canada, and Dublin, Ireland. Champlain offers a traditional undergraduate experience from its beautiful campus overlooking Lake Champlain and over 90 residential undergraduate and online undergraduate and graduate degree programs and certificates. Champlain's distinctive career-driven approach to higher education embodies the notion that true learning occurs when information and experience come together to create knowledge. Champlain College is included in the Princeton Review's The Best 382 Colleges: 2018 Edition. For the third year in a row, Champlain was named a "Most Innovative School" in the North by U.S. News & World Report's 2018 "America's Best Colleges," and an "A+ School for B Students" and is ranked in the top 100 Regional Universities of the North. Champlain is also featured in the Fiske Guide to Colleges for 2018 as one of the "best and most interesting schools" in the United States, Canada and Great Britain and is a 2018 College of Distinction. For more information, visit www.champlain.edu.